Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney discusses the future of Fortnite, and the ongoing desire of developers wants to grow the game from what is mostly known as Battle Royale to a platform that offers many different genres of experiences.
Years after Fortnite’s highly promoted big bang event, which launched Rocket Race, a maker of the Rocket League, Sweeney told Passthecontroller at Unreal Fest 2025.
“That’s our core challenge: making everyone realize that Fortnite is all about the game and you can experience anything there,” Sweeney said. “That will take time.
Progress towards that goal has been stable so far. The festival continues to attract the musical act of big names who found the season with new players skins and music drops. A survival craft experience, the LEGO Fortnite Odyssey has a solid player core. However, Rocket Racing is almost abolished, with new shooter-centric modes like Reloading having more success.
In this week’s Unreal Show state, Epic Games said that third-party experience with Fortnite has been overtaken Epic’s own core mode for the first time, which would have seemed impossible a few years ago. However, Epic Games’ own non-shooter mode currently shows no indication of recreating this success. The number of players is well below the number of developers’ main battle royals and zero build playlists, as well as reloading and providing the game’s Fortnite OG Throwback.
When asked whether mode engagement such as the Musical Fortnite Festival and various experiences at Lego Fortnite was where they wanted an epic game, the executive vice president of epic games replied.
“I think Shooter mode has worked,” Sweeney added. “I don’t think we’ve yet achieved the magic we wanted to achieve with musical gameplay. It’s funny. We brought a Harmonix team.
“They also have the ability to bring all sorts of musical items to Fortnite, not just jam tracks, but all the beats associated with them, and play on instruments.”
Still, despite Fortnite’s highly popular musical live event, despite generating a huge interest and player count for millions, Epic has yet to find a formula that produces the same kind of regular engagement.
“The music is doing very well in Fortnite, but ironically there isn’t that much in music games,” Sweeney said.
“Because rock bands and guitar heroes themselves achieved that day 10 or 20 years ago, there are hundreds of millions of monthly active users and people can come every night or weekend for all sorts of cool concerts and competitive gameplay.”
How about LEGO, perhaps now the deepest established brand within the Fortnite ecosystem, and the most popular product in all epic non-archer modes.
“I think Lego is interesting, Person said. But is it as big as we want? No, we want to find a way to make it bigger and make sure this exists with more Lego fans.”
Again, Epic still appears to be facing the issue of Fortnite being a brand associated with being Battle Royale above all else.
“What is our main challenge? Our main challenge is Fortnite, and historically Fortnite has been a shooter game,” Persson continued. “It’s not a shooter game anymore. It’s all the games and we need to tell that story better than what we did.”
One solution to this is the upcoming rollout of improved features from third-party teams working within Fortnite’s unrealistic engine-powered editor, Sweeney said. EPIC now has a better tool set than other creators, but this changes over time. Epic’s own Battle Royale Seasons will eventually be created (now in 2026) with the same tools that the creators can access.
“When developing modes, we use C++ and the entire unrealistic engine. This is working with the toolset we’ve built. It’s poetry and some APIs,” Sweeney pointed out.
“Our big job is to converge two of these development frameworks, so that we, the epics and creators are working with the same tools with the exact same abilities, and creators have more power there.
But why can’t you just feel at ease with a brilliantly successful battle royale? For epic games, the future of Fortnite as a continuous experience, and the company’s vast revenue source is based on its continued evolution and continued cultural relevance in the ever-changing landscape of popular video game preferences and genres.
“I think we just made Fortnite a success as an ecosystem,” concluded Sweeney. “If someone else actually beats us in our game and builds something bigger, cooler and better than Battle Royale… I think it’s likely to happen.
“Looking at the genre of shooters, new game types have evolved over time based on what is possible with current technology,” he added, noting the evolution of shooters, from simple games to modes with players and vehicles. “Battle Royale is the best shooter game genre that just happened to be invented. And it’s definitely not the last, thanks to both the Japanese filmmakers who discovered the magic and (PUBG creator) Brendan Green.
It’s been a busy week for Epic Games. This follows the recent release of Darth Vader, powered by a highly talkative AI, and we’ve been talking about the unrealistic engine and the future of AI in Fortnite. I’ve also heard about the eye-catching Witcher 4 demo from Epic and Witcher 4 developer CD Projekt Red.
Tom Phillips is the news editor for Passthecontroller. You can contact Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
